213 
composition, which may point out the corrective additions which it 
requires. This portion of the Museum will more especially exhibit 
the relations of geology to agriculture, in so far as a knowledge of 
the materials composing the sub-strata may afford extensive means 
of permanent improvement to the surface, 
a 
MINING RECORDS OFFICE. 
A third department, which it is proposed to add to this establish- 
ment, is an office, for the preservation of such records and docu- 
ments relating to subterranean operations throughout the country, 
as are important to be preserved for the information of future gene- 
rations. 
To the keeper of these records will be assigned the duty of ar- 
ranging the documents which may be transmitted to him from all 
parts of the kingdom, by any engineers, mineral surveyors, and 
proprietors of mines and coal works, who may be willing to 
send them; particularly maps, sections, and under-ground plans, 
which will record the state of each mine, when it is abandoned, for 
the information of those who at a future period may be disposed 
to bring it again into operation. This office will be accessible to 
all persons interested in obtaining the information it will afford. 
To this collection several engineers of most extensive experience 
in the mines of Newcastle and Cornwall have promised large con- 
tributions. 
The keeper will make copies of documents of this kind, which 
proprietors of mines, who cannot conveniently part with the ori- 
ginals, may lend, for the purpose of being preserved in this national 
collection. 
The public importance of such a records office was submitted to 
the Lords of Her Majesty’s Treasury by a Committee of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, assembled at New- 
castle in August, 1838; it being notorious that great losses of life 
and destruction of property have resulted both at Newcastle and in 
other coal mines throughout the kingdom, from the imperfect pre- 
servation of records of the operations previously conducted in them, 
and that still greater losses will inevitably ensue hereafter, unless 
advantage be taken of the experience of living engineers and coal 
